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Microsoft Looking Into Windows Phone 7's 'Excessive' Data Use
phands writes "A few users are complaining that Windows Phone 7 is eating data plans alive. One user estimates idle data usage at 3-5 Mb per hour. Not good for a phone which seems to be struggling against Android and iPhone."
Seriously, does no one do field testing anymore?
It's the normal tracking mechanisms of any cell phone: maps, GPS, app updates.
Windows 7 Phone just sends it in powerpoint format.
damn viruses...
to monitor someone's soul.
Wasn't the whole point of these new phones all the little windows constantly being updated with the latest Twitter, etc data?
"Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
It's the windows phone 7 viruses and trojens phoning home... You'll need to wait for next month's announcment of Norton anti-virus to help deal with the disaster phone.
At the recent Microsoft TechEd, pretty much all of the Windows 7 talks and tutorials were about how cloudy Phone 7 was and how it just used Facebook and all that other stuff directly and so on and so forth.
I asked a couple of different people whether this would mean it would chew a bunch of bandwidth, and the impression I got was that (to paraphrase) "Pretty much everyone is going to have decent data plans these days anyway, so we don't think it's a problem".
The Windows 7 phone is chatty by design, I think they just expect data plans to catch up with it's usage until it's not a problem any more.
Yes, this may sound like a troll, but I'm serious. Their devices are half-assed garbage that never should have left testing. Fuck, their game console STILL has intermittent RROD issues and STILL scratches optical media despite technologies that have existed forever beforehand to prevent that. Not to mention their OS which even though it's improved is still a massive virus-ridden, buggy clusterfuck.
MS, give it up. You're out of your league. It was fine when no one was connected and computers ran MS-DOS, but you have demonstrated time and again that you are completely incompetent when it comes to anything modern.
Hurt them with your wallets, people. Give up your 360s, don't buy these flawed damn phones, and don't even worry with MS Windows.
Everyone who bought one?
Maybe they accidentally embedded the MyLifeBits http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/projects/mylifebits/ software in WP7 and it's sending the results home.
Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel is the headlight of an oncoming train.
oh wait you cant
You see thats what i hate about these "smart" phones, you have no idea exactly what data is being sent over 3G and no control over it, wifi i can fire up a packet sniffer and see and block at the edge routers, but 3G i cant (without some serious hardware tools)
no wonder 1 in 2 phones (iOS/Android) are full of spyware its a free for all for data mining/theft.
i'll stick with my "dumb" nokia until i can have a firewall to protect me
Its just MS's Genuine Advantage Validation Tool making sure you do not use any illegal apps.
That Windows Genuine Advantage isn't going to validate itself....
Put them on Verizon.
If it's anything like a Windows desktop, then it's probably a boatload of security fixes.
Table-ized A.I.
It looks like everyone should just get an unlimited data plan from Verizon.
I can't see anything wrong with that idea.
Now you can go get an Android and suffer like the rest of us.
It's called Windows Phone 7 because it uses 7GB of data per month in standby mode.
- midtoad
Umwelt schützen, Fahrrad benützen
Microsoft: All your data are belongs to us!
Try applying a variation of purpose for an idea I have already implemented on ANDROID:
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1930156&cid=34713952
Except this time, on this MS product, instead.
(That is, provided their IP stack is BSD derived, which it most likely is, & that dev. tools like ANDROID's ADB exist for the MS unit)...
APK
P.S.=> I mean, hey - First of all: It's YOUR MONEY & online speed + security, after all! Secondly/For example, & a single one only (because there's a lot more you can use this for)?
Using HOSTS to block out adbanners & such alone would cut a huge hunk out of the bandwidth usage!
(Let alone security ideas like the one I noted above that HOSTS files are also good for. THUS? Well - You can "Cut the Chatter" to ANYTHING YOU LIKE, using that technique!)... apk
I mean really, do they read Slashdot, hang there heads down in shame, and go and pop open a bottle of single malt and drink?
Or has MS off-shored so much that their technical people are in old textile third World sweat-shops that even the apparel people won't even use and the MSofties over there are just ecstatic getting their $5 a day coding for MS? And they don't even bother with Slashdot or any consumer site that says their product is crap?
1. they are not full of spyware
2. tcpdump works fine on my android phone, I bet iptables does as well.
So most smart phones have a 1ghz chip (just a guess) and windows XP ran well on a1ghz chip, why invent a new crappy W OS like 7?
I do not play in the middle of the road
Has anyone with one of these phones analysed the traffic with wireshark or similar yet?
well you need a netfilter kernel. some vendor kernels might not have it enabled. most do though. community-compiled kernels always have it.
also, pure lol at gp's post. if you have spyware on android then you knew of the danger when installing the app. don't be stupid next time. or do what every enthusiast/pirate does and use a fw.
I noticed the line at the end of the BBC article and couldn't believe what I was reading - does WP7 actually lack copy-n-paste capabilities? Apple took some justified shit for waiting years to include that capability in iPhoneOS. If that's for real, then WP7 deserves its unpopularity.
I had a chance to play with a WP7 device at a big box tech retailer on NYE (oddly, mere moments before getting an iPhone after a spontaneous discussion with my partner about my former piece-o-junk phone[0]). The interface was snappy, but it was pretty obvious why - solid colours, simple text. I have to wonder how well a WP7 device would operate under load with some third-party software installed.
[0] An LG Neon TE365F. Go ahead and laugh, I deserve it for purchasing such a turd.
Someday, you're going to die. Get over it.
It doesn't surprise me that a problem like this has surfaced. As several posters have already pointed out, it's almost impossible to tell what kind of problems a prototype is going to have in the field under live conditions. None of us know what the exact Microsoft (or Apple, or Google, or whoever) testing conditions are before they release a product. To be sure, a wide, varied testing protocol would ensure the best outcomes, however, these are giant corporations with lots of money, but who also have to ensure a significant return on investment. It's likely that the testing methods are at some balance point (possibly arbitrary) between cost and sample size. The flip side of this is that Microsoft's huge market share in terms of home PC users (I still call them IBM-compatibles, but that has started drawing weird looks in public) may tend to make them a bit blind in terms of quality assurance. Maybe they'll learn their lesson over time, but I wouldn't hold my breath. They are a giant steel behemoth doing whatever they are going to do. Vote with your wallets and take whatever evil you think is least.
This is M$ per SP1 is the field test
375-625 kB an hour doesn't sound like that much.
This all sounds suspicious. And though in no way am I a MS astroturfer, I suggest that we all go out and buy one of these phones to see if this actually a problem or not. Agreed!?
3-5 mb idle use????? If it is using ANYTHING that isn't directed by the user, it is too much. What a worthless load of shit.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
There is a reason MS is in a dominate position on the desktop. The visual studio tools are way better than what everyone else has.
No real disagreement with the rest of your post but the reasons MS dominates on the desktop go WAY beyond the quality of their developer tools. Not to say those aren't important (they are) but I think DOS and Windows would probably have dominated even if their developer tools were much worse than they actually are.
It shows how much the world has changed when you start to feel pity for MS
yeah yeah they're still huge and all that...but it's easy to argue that they are bewildered and in decline. They haven't had a _real_ success is about a decade. Win7 is doing well but not 'off the charts' and they seem as surprised as anyone at the consumer interest the Kinect in generating.
/etc/hosts guy! I wondered when you would show up. Long time no incoherent wall of text!
Even after the "Pink" fiasco, even after the decapitation of Danger, and even after the clusterFUCK of "Kin"...how in the HELL does Roz Ho still have a job?
Wow, that actually makes sense.
My experience with Windows started at 3.1. I was an NT early adopter but had to support Windows 95/98/ME. About the time I noticed that the Plus! pack for Windows XP was bigger than the entire OS and Plus! distribution for 98, I realized that every release was bigger, in some cases a LOT bigger, and slower. In some cases, a LOT slower.
It seemed like Microsoft was betting HEAVILY that computer speed and storage prices would continue to keep up with the bloat. It's possible that when Vista came out and initially had poor performance on the hardware at the time, the issue wasn't really that Vista was too slow but that the hardware that users had on their desk did not progress as much as Microsoft had been betting it would. Eventually the hardware did catch up and Vista runs fine now.
I had similar experiences (although not for as long a time) with Windows Mobile. I had a Windows Mobile 5 phone and it was a pig. I had to reboot it regularly and doing any operation beyond initiating or answering calls was an exercise in patience.
When Mobile 6 became available, I jumped on it.
And it was *worse*. I now realize that this is probably because I had not jumped the gap to the next generation hardware.
And so, I'm not surprised at all that the design process for Mobile 7 probably included the assumption that we would have significantly faster hardware, on networks of significantly higher capacity *and* speed (which are two different things) and that they may have been a little too optimistic in that regard.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
I think Apple's antenna testing problems may be due to the fact that the iPhone 4 was always encased in a plastic disguise while outside the lab, so the tester's hand never actually came into contact with the antenna.
It didn't come out of its disguise until it was in mass production, and actual users couldn't wrap their hands around it, triggering the antenna problem, until it was available.
So, extreme secrecy is to blame for this. Maybe next time they'll find a way to test it naked outside the lab. :P
Does it make you happy you're so strange?
wow you posted correctly and BAM!!!, you were not silenced !
wow you posted correctly and BAM!!!, you were not silenced !
OTOH, his endorsement of Android is enough for me to scratch it off of my research list in the future. I would hate to think the crazy is catching. (BTW, not only 'not silenced' but actually modded up!)
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
They probably have some ASP page refreshing in the background, to retrieve weather info or something like that...
Maybe they forgot about the VIEWSTATE and resend it at every refresh ... one of the biggest stupidities I ever saw: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms972976.aspx#viewstate_topic9
At the old place I worked at, they had an internal website that had a 2 MB viewstate on a single page, this being used several times a day by about 80-100 employees.
What could it be?
A) Its a botnet of compromised Windows Mobile phones.
B) Its the secret government backdoor, running amok.
C) Its the death rattle of Windows Mobile phones as they continue to lose market share to Android, iPhone, and Blackberry.
D) Windows Mobile became self-aware; this is the first sign its turning into Skynet.
E) All of the above
/^([Ss]ame [Bb]at (time, |channel.)){2}$/
My reply will stay on the topic of HOSTS files: You can see WHY gmhowell stays "off-topic" on it, in 3 links below he trolled me in (which he literally admits doing in my 'p.s.'):
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http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34536654
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34536868
http://tech.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34534170
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(gmhowell was badly "gunned down in FLAMES" last time he even remotely tried to stay "on topic" as regards hosts files... he's a known troll, no questions asked.)
APK
P.S.=> http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34543612 that's where gmhowell literally admits to "trolling me". Pretty pitiful man & as is your usual? Off-Topic as well... apk
Perhaps it's an AT&T-specific issue, I certainly haven't seen the issue on australian carriers.
No smartphones use an x86 chip.
I have left slashdot and am now on Soylent News. FUCK YOU DICE.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Have you considered how much such thorough testing would cost?
I'm not a manager of such large-scale projects, and I have no idea what Apple's budget is like, so maybe I don't know what I'm talking about, but I think it would be a good idea not to assume incompetence when a limited budget for QA might be the explanation.
Not to mention that I am sure that various executives for different companies at various points in time have had the idea that letting the consumer do the thorough, extreme-case scenario product testing is more cost-effective than conducting such testing prior to product launch. Whether their motivation was cost-savings, an early release on the market, or they were forced into such a situation by limitations on the company's financial resources, you can't deny that such an option is certainly cheaper in the short-run, even though you do run the risk of completely sabotaging your company's brand reputation for quality.
The title of their page is Windows Phone home.
My UID is prime. Hah!
But they weren't strategic decisions, they were just mistakes resulting from the chronic miscalculation of what the real world can actually do outside of their test environments. It's not a strategy, they're just really bad at knowing how people actually use many of their products... including most specifically, what kind of hardware and network real estate people have access to. Dating back to the first SMB/NMB system (and before? I didn't have much experience prior) they just assumed that you had tons of spare network to let your file/print servers/clients constantly blather to each other about where they were and how they were feeling. As long as what the user was looking at worked mostly like they said it would and the basic 'just make it work' configuration could be done by some greenhorn who'd gone to a week long MS boot camp class, they simply didn't care what their products were doing to the back of the house to make it happen because in their environments it simply didn't matter. The fact that the hardware price/performance progress has been so steady is probably one of the only reasons that every MS OS release prior to windows 7 hasn't been a carbon copy of the Vista release. They actually assumed that everybody was not only going to go out and buy new hardware to run Vista, but they were going to buy *nice* hardware to run Vista... which is obviously something that most consumers simply weren't willing to do. I think they just *assumed* that everyone would have an awesome actually unlimited data plan to make their cloudy dreams happen. Now that the wireless comm industry is giving some whole-hearted push back with smaller caps (like in the UK) I'm willing to bet that this is going to cause some friction.
Someone earlier posted a link to this blog entry which is a pretty good read:
http://www.stepto.com/Lists/Posts/Post.aspx?ID=486
No worries, its downloading service packs and Windows defender definitions for your own safety.
These types of device admittedly aren't designed for lower spenders, but in the UK it's fairly common to have short or nonexistent contract periods, where data usage can incur quite hefty fees. On my 'pay-as-you-go' tariff the notional cost of data is £4/MB*, which would put something like this at £20 ($30) an HOUR... By comparison I could get a contract for a new HTC Wildfire for £15/mo. Surely half the idea (of lower-end smartphones at least) is function creep: to try and get more limited users gradually using more and more data so both manufacturers and carriers win. Maybe this is a case of too much, too soon? - * Of course, I would never use this for anything except -very- occasionally checking emails.
The poster doesn't own a WP7 phone and is constantly trolling on the MSFT Yahoo! board. I own a HTC HD7 and 10 days into this month my data usage was at 40MB last I checked. A friend that owns a Samsung focus was at 85MB for 5 days. This isn't a widespread problem. The linked article traces back to a Nov investigation and it was tracked down to Yahoo! email service problem. That email service was using ~1.5MB / hour in that case. There could be more applications that consume too much data, but I'm pretty sure these will get tracked down. I use 3 different email accounts on my phone and frankly I love the phone at this point. It is clear from most of the negitive comments here that these posters don't own the phone and likely haven't even used one. I'm at a loss to understand all the hate towards a great product that is only going to improve over time. What is there to gain by hating?
It seemed like Microsoft was betting HEAVILY that computer speed and storage prices would continue to keep up with the bloat. It's possible that when Vista came out and initially had poor performance on the hardware at the time, the issue wasn't really that Vista was too slow but that the hardware that users had on their desk did not progress as much as Microsoft had been betting it would. Eventually the hardware did catch up and Vista runs fine now.
There was more wrong with Vista than just needing heavy-duty hardware for the time. There were problems with things like copying files on the network (it could be insanely slow in some cases, and in others it appeared slower than it really was because of how the copying progress box updated), UAC prompting far, far more than it needed to, and needing LOTS of RAM. (Windows 7 seems to have the same problem, in my personal experience 4GB is the minimum to make Vista/Win7 truly happy. You can run it on less, but expect a lot of paging.) IIRC, they actually fixed some of the file copying problems in SP1, so it was a real bug, not all perceptual, and it still seems to copy slower than XP _and_ Win7 machines across the network. Personally I think they pushed Vista out too soon, before it was really finished. Win7 is what Vista should have been, after it finished development. That's why it works so much better and has had better adoption.
At least Vista wasn't as bad a ME, but it did have real issues, most of which were fixed in Win7.
I've had a Samsung Focus for a couple months now. (It's pretty damn nice, by the way; even MS bashers really ought to see one hands-on before writing off WP7 - you might be pleasantly surprised.) Overall, my data usage is only about 2/3 what it was on average with my previous phone, probably largely because I let it connect to WiFi when I'm at home (though most of my usage is when I'm out and about) rather than leaving it off all the time to preserve battery (old phone was almost 3 years old and battery life showed it).
I suspect the core issue here is probably threefold:
1. Misunderstanding AT&T's data usage reporting: The original user who wrote in to Paul Thurrot complaining of it to raise this stink was confused by AT&T's data usage reporting terminology, where all traffic is for some reason classified as "Sent" (i.e. the connection originated on the phone as opposed to an incoming text/call), and thought her phone was uploading massive amounts of data that were largely downloads.
2. New smartphone users not used to normal application data installation/usage spikes as they set up their phones and use them more: Thurrot (who publicized this issue and brought it to MS' attention) has been posting charts on his website of his monthly usage since switching from the iPhone. For the first couple months, his usage increased, then it dropped back down to roughly the average he'd been at before in the most recent month. My interpretation would be that once all the initial syncing/app downloads/playing with the new toy more phase is over, the data usage rate is no different.
3. A bug in large Marketplace downloads when on non-functioning WiFi connections: Some people have reported an issue, where when they are connected to WiFi, but that WiFi connection drops connection to the internet, Marketplace will sometimes fall back and download large (> 20 MB) packages over the 3G connection, when it's supposed to refuse to do so except over WiFi or USB. This is the one real bug that's been found so far in the mix. The rest really looks like user confusion rather than actual malfunction.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1907528&cid=34543612
It takes a lot of bandwidth to pull all of your data from your handset to the Microsoft "DeathStar" in Redmond and massage it for resale to the highest bidders.
If you doubt it, check what really being transmitted by isolating the phone in a Faraday cage.
Your ass (along with all your corporate info and all of your personal info,) is being collated for sale.
You bought Microsoft phones? Suckers...
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
read all of the cartoon about the PHB (Pointy Haired Boss)?
Businesses normally function in "failure mode."
In Parkinson's Law, C.Northcote Parkinson codified the ways in which these failure modes are achieved.
In The Peter Principle, Lawrence J Peter proved that people rise to their own level of inefficiency.
In Systemantics, Dr. John Gall further refined these into laws, not just truisms or anecdotal evidence, that explain how things in general don't seem to be working very well , and why.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
> But they weren't strategic decisions, they were just mistakes resulting from the chronic miscalculation of what the real world can actually do outside of their test environments.
I could only speak to what I had observed, and was trying to get M$ the benefit of the doubt, having no evidence that it was miscalculation rather than decision.
> they just assumed that you had tons of spare network to let your file/print servers/clients constantly blather to each other about where they were and how they were feeling.
That's my new favorite phrase.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
> There was more wrong with Vista than just needing heavy-duty hardware for the time.
Yes, you're right. I'd say that there are always problems with any new release which is why you always wait for SP1, but Vista appeared to have more than it's share.
But I'd say that the most VISIBLE problem with Vista was all the "vista ready" hardware that wasn't.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
This sounds like the SMS floods of ActiveSync in Exchange 2003.
--
"Outlook not so good." That magic 8-ball knows everything! I'll ask about Exchange Server next.
So now we know that an unmodified Windows Phone (7, ugh) sends 50 megs of data, to Microsoft, every day. And they're not even fixing it?
This is the height of arrogance, not listening to their user's requests for control over a feature, which could be accomplished with a release in a day, assuming they have some kind of elaborate "settings" system or something.
Scary Version: Data = Big Brother.
See my subject-line above.
APK
"/etc/hosts guy! I wondered when you would show up." - by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 10, @09:59PM (#34831968)
Off topic AC: I was wondering when you would show up (off topic, as usual on your part)...
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"Long time no incoherent wall of text!" - by Anonymous Coward on Monday January 10, @09:59PM (#34831968)
Long time no off topic b.s. on your part (not, this is your usual as you stalk me here).
APK
P.S.=> Learn to read. It's good for you. I can only recommend "hooked on phonics" in your case... apk